The present invention relates to personal environmental monitoring and, more particularly, to real-time mobile monitoring of immediate environmental conditions to ensure compatibility with the environmental sensitivities of a person being monitored.
Environmental conditions such as abnormal temperature, abnormal humidity and presence of airborne particles within a certain range of densities can trigger adverse respiratory reactions in individuals that can lead to discomfort, hospitalization and even death. Regional weather and air quality forecasts can provide useful warnings about environmental conditions that may be hazardous to respiratory health. However, regional forecasts are not always accurate. Moreover, environmental conditions in a person's immediate vicinity may be at variance with regional conditions. For example, regional forecasts cannot account for indoor air pollution. Additionally, regional forecasts do not take into account an individual's particular environmental sensitivities. For example, a person with an abnormally high sensitivity to dust is more likely than a person without such sensitivity to experience constricted breathing in an environment with moderate dust particle levels.
Mobile systems that monitor individual respiratory health in real-time based in part on local environmental conditions are known. For example, Ayyagari et al. U.S. application Ser. No. 11/999,569 describes a system in which a portable handset outputs in real-time respiratory health information generated using locally collected environmental and physiological sensor data and patient background information. However, the system calls for configuration of a body area network to collect sensor data. Moreover, the system relies on physiological data such as wheeze rate, crackle rate, pulse rate, respiratory rate, inspiratory duration, expiratory duration and/or SpO2 level to make respiratory health assessments. Also, the patient background information applied in respiratory health assessments does not include a personal environmental profile that addresses the patient's particular environmental sensitivities.